New Year? New job skills – for free, the web 2.0 way

Some good news first. As of today, 1.23.2012, we are entering the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac, and according to many, including this article, “Year of the dragon brings promise of change. In general, in the dragon years, the world economy does a little better.” So this is the year to kick butt, and better your financial and job situation!

So, I wanted to share some findings with you that might be helpful, especially if you are looking for a job, or wanting to transition to another job in this new year. The tips I am about to give you do require some time and investment, but since you are already investing time in your job search, why not better yourself and learn new, marketable skills?

You see, there are jobs out there actually, believe it or not. Do you know what the hottest jobs and skills are for 2012? Do you know what industries are hiring the most workers? If you don’t , you may want to revisit your current skill sets and see how you can improve and become more relevant in today’s ultra-competitive job market.  And you can learn new skill sets in the privacy of your home, online- for free.

Let’s take a look at some of the free online educational resources:

• List of  400 free online courses from top universities from OpenCulture.com.You can download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player.
• Education-Portal.com provides a great list of free online courses and education, including those from well-known universities.
• Khan Academy is one of my favorites, and it is an all ages site as well: I’ll bet your children will learn a heck of a whole lot more from these tutorial videos than anything they learn at public schools-at least in the U.S. Great for refreshing those long lost math and physics skills.
• Academic Earth lists online courses from the world’s top scholars and top universities such as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
• Want to learn or hone up on techie skills? Stanford University  is offering free computer science online courses. The three initial courses – Machine Learning, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Introduction to Databases – cover material that forms the basis of some of the most prevalent technologies today, from online shopping to web search and robotics.
• M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All: An online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world. “The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material.”
• The Huffington Post blogs: “But unless traditional colleges figure out a way to incorporate the new players and their ideas, such as MIT did recently, the innovators will figure out a way around the credentialing hurdle that will be acceptable to students, parents, and, most important, employers. And when they do, a part of the higher-ed market will be disrupted and rebuilt with students at the center.”
• On the techie note: I.T. is one of the hot skills in demand today, BTW. I.T. hiring ticks up for the third straight year, and I.T. pros with programming skills will be first in line for jobs.  ~Always wanted to learn to code but found it daunting (like me)? Codecademy has made this super easy now. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends. I am trying it out myself!
• Don’t forget skills like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, HTML etc- here is a list of  Top 10 websites for free job skills training online.  And you can’t beat YouTube for providing myriad free tutorials- just type in the keyword of your skill and “tutorial”- you should be able to find quite a few!!

While these courses won’t provide you with an official degree, what you CAN obtain is a ton of valuable knowledge, and even state in your resume that you have taken these courses-guarantee that will impress a hiring manager- MIT? Stanford? Carnegie Mellon? REALLY!? It shows you are willing to better yourself and go the extra step. 

There are also quite a few jobs out there that don’t require degrees and pay decently, however, you can’t just jump into them with no knowledge of the trade.

“In addition, fewer workers have college degrees, so they are harder to find in relation to workers without degrees. Indeed, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, 19 percent of Americans hold a bachelor’s degree, while approximately 31 percent have a high school diploma. Census data also shows that the mean income for a college graduate is $58,613, a significant difference from the $31,283 mean income for a high school graduate. You might reason, then, that to bring home a sizable paycheck, you need to go to college.

Although that’s often true, there are exceptions. Many jobs pay workers well because their daily tasks are dangerous, difficult or extremely specialized. Experience also factors into the equation because many employers value years of experience more than their years of education. These jobs not requiring a degree aren’t necessarily easy to perform nor easy to land.”  Here are fifteen jobs that pay well, no degree required.

This great infographic shows you “On-The-Job Training: Jobs That Require No College Degree”.

So, in order to really be prepared, you need to be able to market yourself as well. There are some super-low cost options to get business cards that you can hand out while networking, whether it be at the grocery story, dentist’s, coffee shop or concert.  Moo cards has really cool cards that you can personalize with QR codes that can link back to your personal online branding site (could be your blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account- but you better have a presence on at least one of them!). You get 50 free classy cards (this is a promotion so not sure when it will end) and all you pay is about $5 shipping and handling. Here’s what my Moo card looks like, front and back (image on right).  VistaPrint also has some free business card deals- you can check them out here.